The Serpent and the Wolf
by BlueNeutrino
Summary: Inspired by a piece of crossover art by Telmand of a futuristic Geralt fighting xenomorphs. In a universe where humans, elves and dwarves have begun to colonize distant planets, Witchers are employed to dispose of monsters, mundane and magical alike. When Geralt takes a contract to destroy a xenomorph nest on a candidate planet for terraforming, things don't go according to plan.
1. Infection

**A/N: This story was inspired by an original piece of crossover art by Telmand on DeviantArt - " _Geralt vs Aliens_ ", which I can't link to here, but can easily be found with a google search. A link can be found on my profile and a clip of it is used, with permission, in the thumbnail for this story. The fic is also being illustrated by the amazing Biblichor on Tumblr, who I owe a massive thanks to for her support.**

 **While this fic combines elements of both the Witcher and Alien universes, it doesn't strictly speaking take place in either, and is more of a speculative reimagining of The Witcher in a scifi setting, in line with the original artwork that inspired it. I encourage everyone to find the painting in question and give it your likes and comments.**

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The blade sings. Chemically treated steel arcs through the air to meet the soft, fleshy resistance of a xenomorph egg, and slices through it as readily as a knife through butter. From inside, a facehugger stirs at its rude awakening, two of its limbs already severed and gushing thick green acid onto its surroundings, then it scrabbles to launch itself at its attacker.

A burst of flame from the man's hand stops it dead, charring it to a crisp, before another attack draws his attention off to his left. A whole facehugger leaps towards him, spindly legs splayed and tail wriggling while its mouth gapes in threat. He pivots, bringing up the same hand to twitch his fingers in a different sequence, and the creature is blasted back several meters as it's hit with the sign of aard.

There's a squeal and a squelch as it collides with the fleshy mass coating the floor, then more hisses sound from close to where it landed, the menacing black shapes of xenomorphs advancing through the dark.

The man looks on grimly. His yellow eyes like a viper's have no trouble seeing through the shadows, readying his sword as he anticipates when the next attack will come. White hair streams behind him, and there's a soft hum from the mechanism in his armour pumping alkaline oil to the blade, protecting it from damage from the fierce bite of xenomorph blood. Strapped to his back is another sword: silver, for all monsters falling under the magical class. The one in his hand: steel, for everything else.

A xenomorph makes the first move. It screeches, gallops, then lunges, claws scrabbling for his throat. Geralt dodges, pirouettes, then brings up his sword to punch through a weak point in its exoskeleton. It shrieks again: a sound that could be easily mistaken for a cry of pain, if he didn't know better. Now it's pissed.

Blood spills out over his hands with a faint hiss, but the alchemical augmentation of his armour does its job. He takes no damage as the creature rounds on him again, then another blast of ignii has it recoiling, scurrying away through the dark. Another xenomorph quickly takes its place, but Geralt came prepared.

A hand flies to his belt, clutching at a Dancing Star bomb and then flinging it towards the advancing horde. There's a flash, a sudden burst of heat, and then more shrieks as they scatter away from the flame. In the deeper parts of the cave, the nest starts to burn.

A grim look of satisfaction passes over Geralt's face. He's ready for the fight. The blade slices through the air, almost too fast to see, and three more fall. Still, others come to take their place, but he's expecting to slay a dozen or more by the time he's through.

After the first dozen have fallen, then the second, he's starting to worry he's less prepared than he thought.

The deeper he looks into the shadows, the more of the creatures come into view, and there's no sign of it slowing. He can't tell where they're coming from, not even with the potions in his bloodstream to heighten his senses, but still as they attack, one by one they drop. Dozens, if not hundreds, of eggs populate the cave floor, and as Geralt fights he takes the opportunity to drive his sword into as many of them as he can. His weapons and armor are becoming coated with the same organic mess that clings to the walls, though the advantage is that it provides more protection from the near-continuous splatter of acidic blood.

As the squelch of webbing pulls at his boots, making dodging ever harder, Geralt almost feels grateful for that. He bisects another egg, drives another xenomorph away with a stream of fire, then narrowly dodges a facehugger that gets perilously close to wrapping its tail around his throat. The small ones are just as lethal as the large ones, he's learned. And from the look of the pulsating eggs littering the floor, there's far more of them. His eyes dart round, specks of amber glinting in the dark, and tries to pinpoint the ovipositor that must surely be responsible for the abundance of eggs. If he finds that, he finds the queen.

By now, his fear level has crept up to hover closer towards panic than a healthy dose of motivation. One xenomorph he can handle. A small swarm is a challenge. An entire nest on his own is, as Vesemir once put it, suicidal. Geralt's starting to realise that wasn't hyperbole.

Another xenomorph lunges for him, and he drags his feet out of the sticky webbing they're sinking into and spins to bring his sword up in an arc. The acid-resistant alloy cuts clean through the creature's skull, alkaline blade oil working quickly to neutralize its blood, though not before a good amount has sprayed in Geralt's direction.

He throws up a hand and casts quen, shielding himself from the burst of fluid, but it barely buys him a second before the xenomorph's second set of jaws, intact and freed from the shell of its skull, extend and snap viciously at his head.

Even with it half-decapitated and dying, Geralt doesn't have a sign strong enough to repel it completely. He dodges the attack and rolls, uncomfortably aware of the squelching suction of the nest floor slowing him down, then rises and swings his sword to hack clean through the barbed tail swinging towards his chest.

He isn't getting paid enough for this. Terraforming companies want safe land to colonise, but they aren't prepared to pay a decent fee to the witchers who eradicate the threats. Not even prepared to give them adequate warning of the dangers, Geralt thinks bitterly, as he recalls that the nest had been described to him as a "minor" infestation. If this is "minor", when he makes it out of here, he's demanding a minor fucking payrise.

Another attack, another dodge, followed by a counter-attack then avoid-the-acid-spray, and Geralt's starting to feel the drag of exhaustion. His chest heaves, each swing of his sword getting heavier and less precise. He can tell his signs are weakening, too many of them cast together in quick succession, and the difficulty of maneuvering through the nest is depriving him of his speed advantage. He reckons he's been fighting non-stop for near thirty minutes by the time the sound comes from above: the characteristic hiss of a xenomorph and the menacing snap of heavy jaws. Just from the sound, he can tell it's unmistakably larger than any of the drones.

Geralt turns his head upwards, and sees what he came for.

The queen shrieks, lowers her crested head towards him, and the witcher twitches his fingers and casts a stream of fire in her direction. Satisfaction tugs his mouth into a smile as he hears the responding screech of distress, and she recoils into the ceiling. If he kills the bitch, the others will drop far easier.

"Come on," he growls, and the queen appears to rise to the challenge as she spits then goes for him again, a downward swipe of her claws towards his throat. Geralt rolls out of the way, slicing through another egg on his way back up, though the stickiness of the webbing tries to pull him back down. He lets off a burst of low-intensity fire at the floor to try and weaken the chemical bonds, then drags himself out with a creaking snap of the organic fibers before swinging his sword in a wide arc that deflects her claws and takes out a xenomorph not far behind.

Then he missteps. All it takes is one instance of bad footing, and his boot sinks into the fleshy substance up past the ankle.

His stomach lurches. Jaws descend from above to snap close to his ear, and it's only his heightened reflexes that allow him to twist away in time. His sword swings, hacks off the extending tongue housing the queen's inner jaws, but his foot holds fast. He's stuck.

 _Shit_.

Another screech behind him, and Geralt ducks, arcing the blade over his head so a spray of acid would rain down on him were it not caught by the golden glow of his quen shield. That's losing intensity. He needs to recast, but his energy for it is running low.

Opting instead to expend that energy on the offensive, Geralt casts ignii and drives away two more. He keeps the fiery glow alight in his hand, a warning should any more of them try to advance, but it's not enough deterrent to buy him time to break free. One of the bolder ones goes for him again. It takes a burst of fire direct to the face, rushing forward in defiance, then a last minute switch to aard takes all of Geralt's concentration to knock it back.

Facehuggers scuttle across the floor. One of them leaps at him, and he swings his sword like a club and splits it in two. Seconds later, another meets the same fate. Anchored in place, he can't pivot in time to avoid a third.

There's a soft hiss from above him, and it almost seems like the queen is laughing as Geralt sees the pale, spidery shape drop down from the ceiling just a heartbeat too late to stop it.

Abruptly, his breath catches in his throat as something slick and bitter invades his mouth. He struggles, a mad, ten-second burst of panic as his sword falls from his hands and he claws at the creature attached to his face, then the shock takes over. Geralt's body falls limp, and he feels nothing more.


	2. Gestation

Geralt wakes to a parched, sandpaper throat and something slimy and heavy binding his limbs. With a groan, he cracks his eyelids open and peers into the dark. It takes a moment for him to focus, shadow and light fading in and out, then his vision sharpens to reveal the shapes of the nest. Parts of it still glow faintly, though the moistness of the organic matter coating the cave walls hasn't allowed the fire to spread far. It's the only light Geralt has to see by now, his potions having worn off to leave him reliant on a more rudimentary level of vision. It's still enough to make out the shapes of the drones crawling among the rows of eggs and creeping over the walls.

Silently, Geralt flexes his muscles and tests the strength of the organic mass cocooning him. He knows what happened, knows why he's still alive, and on a cerebral level he also knows that the sooner he accepts it, the sooner he can deal with it. That isn't quite enough to stop his body's visceral reaction to the parasite that this very second is growing in his chest.

He breathes deep, struggling to quell the fear that churns his stomach or slow the quickened thumping of his heart. The more his body responds, the more likely it is the parasite will awake, and he has to stay calm. Keeping his heart rate and metabolism as slow as possible right now is what will buy him time to make it out of here.

Assuming, of course, that he's able to make it past the xenomorphs first.

Geralt twists his wrist and tests the bindings again. There's a thin membrane of webbing clinging to his right hand, flexible and porous enough that he can force his fingers through, and he does so and flexes them experimentally one by one. He's not sure if it grants enough movement to cast a sign, but it's worth a try. Ignii has had some success breaking down the organic material so far, and his gloves can handle the heat.

He's anticipating that it will draw attention as he manages to conjure a flame strong enough to pull his hand free, then starts to claw at the rest of the fleshy substance pinning his body to the floor. One lone xenomorph wanders over, hisses as it gets close enough for the firelight to reflect in the glossy dome of its skull, then retreats. They won't attack him. Not now.

Though, that's not to say they won't retaliate if provoked.

With a squelch, Geralt manages to free himself enough from the cocoon to get to the knife at his belt, then hacks away what remains of the substance holding him in place. He sits up, a hand going instinctively to his chest as the movement makes him cough hoarsely, then gives a grimace as he spots the remains of the facehugger just a couple of feet away. It's lying on its back, legs curled stiffly above it in an obscene display of rigor mortis.

Nausea washes over him, and Geralt knows it isn't from the sight. Already, he can feel the sweat beading on his brow, his immune system kicking into overdrive as it tries to expel the foreign invader. It's got one hell of a fight on its hands.

He tries to ignore the discomfort as he looks around for his sword, lying where he'd fallen within arm's reach. The tube for the oil pump has come detached, and he inspects it briefly for acid damage before equipping it again and standing up. It's serviceable, though the edge has dulled more than he'd like. Should do well enough for self-defense as he tries to make it out of here, but he isn't exactly planning on using it to launch an attack. Too much of an adrenaline rush right now could be exactly what finishes him off.

He's unsteady on his feet as he staggers in what he hopes is the direction of the cave opening, but there's a voice in the back of his mind telling him he can't leave just yet. Contract or no, he's hardly about to leave a swarm of xenomorphs wandering round unchecked. A hand goes to his belt, checking his remaining arsenal, and what he finds makes him somberly clench his jaw. One Saturnium bomb, radioactive, compactifying the force of a nuclear blast into a radius of about five hundred meters.

He only even brought it as a last resort. With one glance at his surroundings, then another down at his chest, Geralt thinks he's just about there.

His eyes pan round, gauging the size of the cave, and he decides the bomb will just about do. As long as he sets if off from the center of the nest, he thinks it has the scope to take out every single one of the fuckers, though at the expense of severely irradiating the surrounding land. The contractors won't be happy with him for it, though Geralt thinks he can say the feeling's mutual.

The witcher coughs again, drawing the attention of a nearby xenomorph, and he wills his body to stop fighting the infection so aggressively. He has a way to deal with that later. There's still time, but the more antibodies and stimulating hormones flood his system, the more that time erodes. Geralt breathes quietly, and hopes the larva is still only in the early stages of gestation.

The xenomorph nearby gives a hiss and makes a clicking sound in its throat as it draws unnervingly close, but sensing the parasite curled inside his chest, it doesn't attack. Geralt holds his sword at arm's length, hopefully serving as a warning as he makes his way steadily towards a prime spot to detonate the bomb. Eventually, the creature loses interest. He chooses a spot almost directly below the highest point of the cave, then kneels down between the rows of dormant eggs and sheaths his sword.

The ignition works on a cascade mechanism. Once primed, a sequence of smaller reactions works to charge the bomb before it detonates, buying Geralt time to get out. All he has to do is activate it and run.

Geralt reaches for the pack on his belt to take out the tiny cylinder of primer, the hesitates a brief second as he glances in the direction of the exit. He'll have ten minutes, at most. In the absence of any obstacles, he can make it in three, but there's an abundance of eggs and several dozen xenomorphs between him and the passage. He bites his lip and presses a hand worriedly to his chest. Even with the parasite nestled below his sternum, there's no guarantee they'll just let him walk out of here.

He turns back to the bomb and twists off the cap, then dispenses the priming agent into the chamber and twists back again to activate. Faintly, the substance within the lead casing begins to glow green through the joints in the shell. His countdown's started.

Geralt rises and begins to move as swiftly as he dares towards the tunnel leading back to the outside. He'd prefer to run, but already he's drawing attention, the black domes of xenomorph heads turning in his direction and their hisses getting louder. He needs to keep his adrenaline down and his heart rate slow.

His boots squelch on the webbing as he clambers over a ridge towards the cave mouth, and thinks he can see the deep blue of light filtering through the planet's atmosphere in the distance. Another step, and the sight is replaced by rows of white teeth snapping inches from his face.

He stumbles back, hand immediately flying to draw his sword, then holds it steady in front of him as the xenomorph makes no move to attack. Its lips draw back in a snarl, stalking slowly forward, but it seems to have the intent to deter than to maim. They don't want him to leave.

Geralt stands his ground, rapidly weighing up his options. In the back of his mind, he can practically hear the ticking clock of his time running out. Attacking now is a risk. They won't strike to kill, not while they need him to incubate the larva in his chest, but unless he can fight at the top of his game they'll sure take out a few of his limbs. Right now, with his body devoting practically all its resources to fighting the parasite, he's not sure he can.

Geralt raises his free hand and casts axii, and genuinely doesn't know if it will have any effect on a creature with such a ferocious and deeply ingrained instinct to kill.

It doesn't. The xenomorph screeches, then launches itself unexpectedly at his face.

He swipes at it with his sword, ducking under the acid spray as part of its head comes off, then he sees more of them advancing to form a blockade across his path.

 _You're all gonna die_ , he thinks grimly. _Even if you take me with you._

Another xenomorph leaps at him and he raises a hand to blast it away, then charges forward. Stealth be damned, now he has no choice but to fight as one by one, he cuts them down. Overhead, there's a ripple of movement, and he looks up to see the queen lower her head towards him, hissing and lips drawn back in a snarl. Between the rows of her teeth, he sees the silvery green scarring on the stump where he'd severed her inner jaws. Perhaps for her, this is revenge.

Caution thrown to the wind, Geralt rushes forward into the swarm as he ploughs determinedly towards the exit. With a sign, he forces some of the creatures back and traps them with yrden to clear a path, but more rush forward to take their place. There's a flurry of claws and teeth and barbed tails, more than a few of them making contact to dent his armor and one even drawing blood from a shallow cut in his neck, but he still has the strength to fight them off. The fleshy substance clinging to the walls thins out the further he gets along the passageway, and eventually he feels solid ground beneath his boots and it becomes much easier to run.

He takes down a xenomorph blocking his path then glances back, seeing more of them swarm like ants from the mouth of the nest, before his gaze pans higher. Rock. Actual solid rock, tinged green with copper and hanging down in long, pointed stalactites. Geralt throws up a hand and blasts it with aard.

There's screeching behind him as the ground rumbles and the structural integrity of the cave begins to crumble, but Geralt doesn't glance back again as he continues to run. He throws up a hand to shield his head from the dust and debris raining down, but there's the deep blue of a night sky and the chill of wind blowing from up ahead.

Behind him, the shrieks of the xenomorphs are receding. Either they chose not to follow, deciding the creature waiting to burst from his chest will soon find its way back, or they can't.

A storm is raging when he makes it outside, biting winds and rain lashing at his face. The planet is partially terraformed and the atmosphere breathable, if thin, but as with most planets in the halfway stages, the weather is violent and unpredictable.

He's turned away from the cave opening when the blast goes off, but he sees the green flash illuminate his surroundings for no longer than a heartbeat and feels the shockwave pound his back. He's out of the blast radius. The actual explosion is designed to be small, but he still needs to find shelter from the fallout.

For just a moment, Geralt allows himself to glance back, feeling a flood of relief and satisfaction as he sees the collapsed entrance to the cave that had once housed the nest. A faint haze of gas drifts upwards from the wreckage, causing ripples in his vision, and he figures it's the vapour from acid reacting with the rock. Best not to linger around that too long.

Geralt lifts his sword to sheath it, and off to his right, hears a hiss.

Turning his head, he sees a familiar black shape emerging over a ridge, claws scrabbling on the rock as it bares its teeth. Rough, blotchy patches on the dome of its skull are glowing radioactive green.

Geralt heaves a sigh. One more. Always one fucking more. He moves his sword in front of him again, casts quen, then lets the xenomorph do all the work. In a furious frenzy it charges, spits, leaps, and impales itself on his outstretched sword.

There's a brief moment of panic as the acid spray comes on thick and he has to fight to reinforce the shield, then the corpse drops to the dirt. Kicking it away, Geralt expels a breath then flattens a hand over his racing heart and wills it to slow. He feels queasy. All that exertion is bound to have had an effect on the larva, and he really doesn't want to find out what will happen if he leaves it untreated.

His ship - a small one man shuttle, _Roach_ \- is parked less than half a kilometer away. Bracing himself against the storm, Geralt makes it to the airlock before staggering inside. He ignores the console, the warning reporting unfavorable conditions for takeoff, and instead goes straight for the potions case next to the water filter. Throwing it open reveals the foam-lined tray of vials, over half of them empty from the potions and decoctions already used, but the one he needs is there. Black Serpent, designed precisely for this scenario, should halt the growth of the xenomorph larva inside his chest and outright kill it before reaches maturity. Provided it doesn't kill Geralt first.

The witcher wastes no time in popping off the cap and knocking it back in one gulp. It's vicious stuff. A taste like ash and bleach burns his throat as it goes down, and the stink of it clings so thickly in his nose he briefly wonders if he'll ever be able to smell anything else again. Then he coughs, sputters, and feels the stinging heat spread through his veins as he fights the urge to vomit the potion straight back up.

For several seconds it's crippling, making him double over in pain as his stomach cramps, then he lifts his head, gasping, and finally makes it over to the console. The computer is advising him not to attempt takeoff, but Geralt overrides it and does so anyway. He's not about to hang around for the fallout, and the sooner he makes if off this hellhole planet, the better.

The shuttle shakes violently as the autopilot struggles to get it to stabilise, but Geralt's nausea is already maxed out as he sits on the floor with his chest heaving and tries to shed his mucus-caked armour. The carbon fiber plate comes away first, then the kevlar, and finally he peels away the elastomer bodysuit underneath. By the time he's down to his underwear, the shuttle's at stratospheric altitude and the flight's considerably more stable

The witcher pulls himself up into the sleeping chamber mounted in the wall and reaches for the interface on the shelf beside it. He puts it into diagnostic mode then lies still as the arm of the built-in scanner sweeps over him, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. He needs to know how far along in the gestation period he is, how big the larva has gotten, how it's sitting in his chest…

It takes a few seconds for the computer to collate the data, and he swallows nervously as he watches the LCD screen above him telling him to " _please wait…_ " Then, the display blinks, and Geralt sees the results of the scan.

It's impossible for his stomach not to lurch as he takes in the image. The larva is an obscene white mass underneath his ribs, the bulk of it sitting atop his diaphragm while its head extends up between his lungs. Its tail is curved back towards his spine, passing vertically behind the shadow of his heart before its tip curls forward again and intersects his aorta. It's already putting dangerous pressure on the blood supply to and from his heart. Any slight movement will be enough to cause damage.

There's nothing Geralt can do about it.

Nauseous, he gets up again and crosses to the water filter. He dispenses a tall glass and drinks until his throat's no longer parched and the acrid taste of ash sits less thickly on his tongue, but it does nothing to stop the bile rising in his stomach. Another glass of water he leaves on the shelf by the bed before gathering the medical kit and preparing a syringe, drawing a pale blue, translucent fluid into the chamber through a long, low-gauge needle. Paralytic agent, its pH high enough to be effective even against a still-maturing xenomorph's muscles. Should the larva stir before the potion's taken effect, a direct injection to his chest should buy him more time.

It's not without its risks. The needle will last three seconds in acid, at most, before melting to form a soft byproduct that should plug any leaks into his chest cavity. If it still bleeds after that…

Well. There's a reason it's a last resort.

Geralt sets the needle down on the shelf by the water, sinks back down onto the bed, and passes out.


	3. Fever Dream

Geralt can't be sure which it is that wakes him: the sudden stabbing pain behind his sternum or the deafening crunch as his ribs crack. His eyes fly open, lips parted in a scream he can't draw the breath to make, and he curls into himself as another blow lands inside him and he swears his diaphragm has ruptured.

For a moment, panic takes over and all he knows is pure, debilitating terror. _I'm going to die,_ he thinks, and Yennefer's face flashes through his mind. Ciri's.

It's the thought of her, the agonizing emptiness as he imagines never seeing her again, that allows him to pull it together. His hand flies out, frantic and uncoordinated, and fumbles for the syringe. Instead, it hits the glass of water, spilling its contents onto the controls for the scanner, which hiss and die with a spark. Geralt doesn't even notice. His fingers curl around the needle, gripping it like a lifeline, then without even thinking, he aims and stabs it between his ribs.

The pain of it is barely a blip on the radar in comparison, though he swears the initial second of nothing happening lasts an age. Geralt waits, eyes screwed shut and not daring to breathe, until the pressure in his chest eases and the larva abruptly falls still. He tastes blood in his mouth.

His knuckles are white where they grip the syringe. His muscles have frozen, not daring to pull it out again after depressing the plunger, and he blinks confusedly when he feels the cylinder come away in his hand. The structural integrity of the needle has failed, leaving behind a melted lump of steel inside his chest.

Inside the xenomorph too, with any luck. Geralt still doesn't move, the lack of oxygen making his lungs burn as he waits to see if there's bleeding. The sharp ache in his ribs could easily mask the sensation of them beginning to burn, and he can't even breathe for fear of disturbing the organism inside him and triggering a surge of acid.

Eventually, it gets too much. Geralt inhales.

The sound is harsh, strained as his intercostal muscles feel like they've seized, and he wonders if some of the paralytic has made it into his system. Already, his blood is turning dangerously alkaline from the potion alone. A glance down at his chest shows his veins a stark bluish black beneath his skin, and there's a thick, dark line where they feed contaminated blood to his heart. He worries that it will prove as toxic to him as it does the xenomorph.

When another minute passes with Geralt still struggling to breathe, he reaches above him and punches the lock on a compartment in the ceiling so that an oxygen mask falls down. He grasps it and holds it to his face with a trembling hand.

Inside his chest, there's stillness, though with each laboured inhale he thinks he can feel the shape of the larva pressing against his lungs. Perhaps it's just his imagination. The pain comes in waves, its sharpness fading to a dull throb that overpowers even his heartbeat. In the face of it, even the oxygen isn't enough to keep him conscious. Geralt's grip on the mask goes slack, and again he faints.

In the hours it takes for consciousness to return, Geralt dreams. He dreams of Kaer Morhen, a crumbling castle on a distant planet, and imagines the courtyard overrun by black creatures with domed heads and two sets of snapping jaws. Even in his dream, it's an invasion they can't see off, and Geralt watches as Vesemir and Lambert and Eskel all succumb one by one until only he remains. With a swipe of xenomorph claws across his throat, he watches himself die, and the castle is left to rot until the stone towers and steel ramparts have been all but consumed by a creeping growth of grey, fleshy pulp.

He dreams of Ciri, of her searching for him as he has for her more than once before, only for her to find his shuttle drifting in a wasteland of nowhere and his body cold with a gaping hole punched through his chest. He wants to warn her, to scream that there's a now fully-grown xenomorph lying in wait, but he's already dead. He's helpless to stop it as it takes her too.

The shock of it jerks him back to consciousness, panicked, disoriented, until he calms himself enough to realise it was only a dream. It won't become reality. He promises himself that.

The fear of returning to the nightmares motivates him to attempt getting up, but he doesn't have the strength. Lifting himself just a few inches makes his head spin, and he comes crashing back down again with a grunt and a shock of pain searing through his cracked ribs. Looks like he'll just lie there, then.

The nausea comes and goes, as does the pain, but he doesn't feel any movement from the larva again. It's enough that he begins to feel hope that he'll pull through. He's exhausted, and ready for the ordeal to be over. Then he remembers that even should he survive this initial stage, he still has to find a way to remove the xenomorph's corpse from inside him, and realises there's a long way yet to go.

With a groan, Geralt makes another attempt to drag himself out of bed. A little of his strength has returned and he stumbles in the direction of the console, his hands clutching at the pilot's chair to steady himself before he sinks down into it and manages to program in a destination. Simply doing that takes all of his energy, yet it succeeds in calming him a little as the churn of fear in his gut becomes a little less intense.

That should get him where he knows he'll find help. Now he just has to make it back to the bed.

Geralt spends several minutes almost passed out at the console before he persuades himself to attempt it, then half crawls back to the sleep pod and collapses onto the memory foam. The veins in his hands don't seem quite as ominously black as before, he thinks as his fingers clutch at the sheets, and he isn't sure if that's a good sign or not.

The thought of sleeping again still unnerves him, but it soon becomes impossible to fight any longer as his eyelids grow heavy and his tormented body demands that he let it rest. Geralt dozes and soon surrenders once more to unconsciousness.

This time, he doesn't dream.

* * *

Some time later, the beeping of the console rouses Geralt from his uneasy sleep. A bleary eyed glance towards the screen tells him he's approaching orbit. It should have been long enough by now. Time to get up.

Gingerly, Geralt props himself up on the pillow and glances down at his chest, a cautious hand going to his ribs to inspect the damage. He can feel nothing, though he's reluctant to press any harder for fear that the larva might still be alive.

The medical scanner's still down. That's going to need repairing when this is over, but for now, Geralt reaches instead for the medical kit by the bed and takes out a stethoscope. He licks his lips nervously as he puts it on, then tentatively presses the end to his chest.

For several long seconds, he listens. His ears strain to hear friction rubs, or the sound of movement, or the rush of that acidic blood. Instead, there's nothing but the beating his own heart.

Anxious, Geralt sucks in a shaky breath. His heart sounds weak, uneasy, seeming to trip over itself as it stumbles in an uneven rhythm. It will be a while before it recovers.

But, it _is_ still beating, and for now, that's just going to have to do. Geralt swings his legs over the side of the bed and gets up. He walks unsteadily over to the console and takes a seat, before taking manual control and beginning to lower the shuttle into the atmosphere of the colonial planet below. There's a city in the northern hemisphere he'll reach soon, if he's matched his orbit right.

Turns out he has. Within ten minutes, he's no more than a few thousand feet above his destination. Geralt opens the comms channel and hails his contact.

He's relieved when he gets an almost immediate response. "Geralt, it's been a while," a familiar voice says over the intercom. "What can I help you with, my friend?"

"Regis." A warm smile of relief breaks over Geralt's face. "Need you to get a xenomorph larva out of me."


	4. Corpus Alienum

Regis is waiting for him when he brings the shuttle in to dock behind the clinic. As Geralt descends the boarding ramp, the vampire strides up to greet him with an embrace: a careful one, as if he's already aware of Geralt's cracked ribs. As much as it's genuine happiness to see him, Geralt also suspects it serves some diagnostic purpose, allowing Regis to get close enough to smell his blood, the chemicals secreted in his sweat, and gauge his temperature and heart rate. Right now, Geralt would wager it all amounts to "not good".

His suspicions are confirmed a moment later when Regis pulls back and fixes him with a worried stare. "What trouble have you gotten yourself into, Geralt?"

"Xenomorphs," Geralt replies, face scrunching in disgust. "I'd rather fight a dragon."

Regis looks anxious. "I'm certain the pros and cons of each foe are debatable, though at the very least, a dragon would not use you as an unwilling host to perpetuate its reproductive cycle," he muses, glancing at Geralt's chest. "You best come in. I've cleared my schedule. This rather takes priority."

He leads Geralt into the clinic housed inside the shell of a defunct terraforming rig, which having served its purpose, hadn't been worth the expense of launching back into orbit and was left to rot where it lies. Regis had been less keen to let a perfectly good vessel go to waste, and had found a new purpose for it as a medical clinic and pharmacy serving the colony. The biomes that had formerly provided the planet's sole agricultural output now cultivate herbs for use in medicines, the soil and atmospheric sampling module serves very well as a laboratory, and the ethane processing unit has been converted (quite ingeniously, Geralt thinks) into a distillery.

The setting in a centuries-old structure in the liminal space between colonized city and the wilderness beyond seems to befit a vampire. With the rig serving as his base, Regis has settled into a comfortable way of life treating both the colonists and, not infrequently, Geralt. Short of his vampiric nature being exposed and making it impossible for him to stay, Geralt suspects Regis will remain here for quite some time.

They pass through a sliding glass door to reach a treatment room where several tables of equipment line the walls and an exam table sits in the centre. Regis motions to it. "Take a seat, Geralt," he says while he begins gathering an IV stand and bags of saline. "I shall inspect the damage in a moment, but I'd like to start cleansing your blood as soon as possible. It smells terrible even from here."

"Coming from a vampire, I'm offended," Geralt retorts as he gingerly tugs off the soft polyester shirt he'd found on board the shuttle and lies down. He barely has chance to blink before Regis is suddenly at his side and inserting a cannula at his arm.

"Nonsense," the physician tuts. "I'm sure you'd be far more upset with me if I said the opposite. At present, your blood smells much like drain cleaner and asbestos, highly caustic and bitter. I have grave concerns for your vital organs if it is allowed to remain that way much longer."

Geralt watches as a clear fluid begins to flow along the tube into his arm. "Wait," he says, and grasps at Regis' sleeve. "I just need to know - before you do anything - is it dead?"

Regis halts what he's doing and studies Geralt's face closely. The witcher is afraid. For all his efforts to not let that get the better of him, he isn't trying to hide it from Regis. Can't.

Without saying a word, Regis takes a stethoscope from the table beside him and puts it on. He rests the end on Geralt's chest, careful not to aggravate the damage to his ribs, and listens. His expression shows intense concentration as he moves the stethoscope across Geralt's chest, listening intently and thoroughly, then says with certainty, "It's dead."

Hearing that from him comes as no small relief.

"The only movement I can detect in your chest, Geralt, is your heart and breath," Regis elaborates. "If the initial infection occurred even at the latest estimate you gave me, were it not dead, we would not be here having this conversation." He slings the stethoscope around his neck and busies himself with the IV lines once again.

Geralt rests his head back on the table and closes his eyes. He's still feeling sick, skin hot and uncomfortable as his immune system still refuses to concede defeat, but his fate has long since passed out of its hands. He asks no further questions as he allows Regis to work on him, trusting the vampire to do what needs to be done. "Extracting the larva will require major surgery, I'm afraid," Regis continues at length. "Since you were last here, I've developed a version of Golden Oriole that can be administered intravenously without toxic side effects. My hope is that that, followed by an oral dose of White Honey, will adequately cleanse your system of the poison. General anaesthesia carries risks even in the best of circumstances, and I wouldn't want to administer it with your body in its currently weakened state."

Geralt swallows it without comment when he's offered the bottle to drink from, then once Regis is satisfied with the cocktail of fluids dripping into his veins, he sets about examining Geralt more closely. At first he probes with his hands over Geralt's ribcage and the soft parts just beneath, his touch inhumanly gentle over the sorest spots, then he wheels over an ultrasound device on a cart and begins to use the probe. Geralt can see the screen as Regis studies the display, though he's certain the vampire can interpret the shapes on it far more clearly than he can. Instead, Geralt gets most of what he needs to know from Regis' face. The grim look in the vampire's eyes and the uncharacteristic clench of his jaw is disconcerting.

"What are you thinking?" Geralt prompts when it becomes clear Regis doesn't want to say anything.

"Its tail is curled rather tightly around your heart," the vampire reports back, deciding not to sugar coat it. "And it's inconveniently positioned in relation to your aorta. Removing it won't be easy. I can see already how it's restricting your cardiac muscle and contributing to the irregularity of your heartbeat."

Geralt swallows. "But you can get it out, right?"

"That's the problem, Geralt," Regis says, and Geralt feels a chill. "The xenomorph may be markedly different from most other organisms in many ways, but in death, its muscles appear to exhibit the common behaviour of going stiff. I can see they're quite rigid from here. If anything, the effect appears to be more pronounced due to the chemical compounds in its exoskeleton breaking down." He sighs, and Geralt isn't sure he's ever seen him look so anxious before. "Since I cannot dissect it without encountering the worse problem of an acid spill, unravelling it from your heart will require a great deal of maneuvering.

"But it's not impossible?"

"While your heart still beats, I'm afraid it is."

That hits Geralt like a punch in the gut. "Regis, I'm not dying," he says firmly. "And I'm not about to just keep walking around with a dead acid monster in my chest. There's got to be…"

"There is another way," Regis says before he even finishes the sentence. "Stilling your heart temporarily is achievable. While there may be more difficulty in placing the components than usual, I suspect I can fit you with a cardiopulmonary bypass."

It takes a second for that to sink in. There's no point pretending the thought of even briefly stopping his heart doesn't fill Geralt with dread, but it isn't looking like there's any other choice. "You _suspect_ you can?"

"I _can_ , Geralt," Regis says more confidently this time. "I have the necessary equipment to hand. I can stop your heart long enough to extract the larva, and then revive you."

Geralt grits his teeth. _Fuck this,_ he thinks. _Fuck the company for sending me there._ After everything, after surviving the nest and the facehugger and the poison just to keep his heart beating, at the last step he's facing it being stopped. Instinctively, a defensive hand goes to his chest, fingers curling over the organ as if he wishes he could just rip the parasite out himself.

Regis stays politely silent, removing the probe as he allows Geralt time to process. "There's no other option, is there?" the witcher says flatly.

"Believe me, Geralt, I can't tell you how much I regret that there isn't. But if I were to attempt the surgery without a bypass, if your heart stopped, as would be a considerable risk, I wouldn't be able to restart it."

It's the truth. Geralt knows it, hears the anguish in Regis' voice, but he knows what has to be done. "Alright," he says, his throat tight. "I guess it's decided, then."

* * *

It takes another hour for Regis to be satisfied with the state of Geralt's blood before proceeding. The vampire gives him a surgical gown and tells him to take a shower, and Geralt obediently washes his chest with the supplied disinfectant before returning to the room Regis is prepping for surgery. His mouth is dry, but the vampire has refused to allow him to drink. There's a risk he'll cough up fluids into his lungs while being intubated and drown, which Geralt thinks seems like such a ridiculous way to go. He ignores his thirst and lies back on the table while he waits for Regis to be ready.

The vampire is wearing green surgical scrubs, the sleeves ending above his elbows to allow him to thoroughly disinfect his skin, and a clear plastic apron is tied around his waist. He's carefully arranging his trays of equipment, disinfecting the tools at such a rate even Geralt can't see his hands moving, but after he's done there's more than enough time for Geralt's gaze to linger on each one. He sees the scalpels, the forceps, the bonesaws, and while there's nothing there he hasn't encountered before, now that he's lying here as the subject on the table, he's suddenly nervous.

With each passing second Geralt can feel his heart struggling in his chest, the xenomorph larva wrapped tight around it, and he grows more and more impatient for Regis to just get the fucking thing out of him. Finished with the tools on the trays, the vampire has moved onto prepping the bypass machine. Regis is moving quickly. He already has inhuman speed, and it helps him turn the machine on and inspect each component without the need for an entire team. If it weren't for Regis' greatly enhanced abilities, Geralt doesn't think he'd ever agree to such a surgery performed solo. Probably wouldn't agree to such a surgery, period.

More cannulae and tubes are pushed into his veins, though Regis' work with the needle is so fine and precise, Geralt barely feels a thing. His heart is fluttering nervously, and even before Regis attaches wires to his limbs and feeds a line down through the vein in his neck, Geralt knows he can hear it. As a pulse oximeter is clipped to his finger and a blood pressure cuff slipped around his arm, the beeping of the monitor only confirms it. "Breathe, Geralt," Regis reminds him calmly. "Slowly, through your nose."

Geralt does, and when he sees the vampire standing over him with a face mask in hand, a tank of gas attached at the other end, he realises they're ready. He inhales as deeply as the tightness in his chest will allow, and waits for Regis to begin.

Regis cradles Geralt's face as he presses the mask over his nose and mouth, listening to the soft hiss of gas alongside the rush of the witcher's blood. "I know your instincts will tell you to fight it, but try to relax and allow yourself to sleep," the vampire says, rubbing his thumb in a soothing motion along Geralt's cheek. "I will see to it that you wake up."

Yellow eyes gaze sleepily up at him, and in them Regis sees both trust and fear. It's probably beyond his control to provide true comfort right now, but he does his best to exhibit a confidence he isn't sure he has in his assertions that everything will be alright. Even if this is to be a surgery Geralt won't wake up from, Regis wants the last thing he sees to have been a friendly face.

Before long, those yellow eyes have lost focus and begun to close. A look of peace settles on Geralt's face, and he surrenders.


	5. Cardioplegia

**A/** **N: This chapter consists entirely of the surgery. It is long, detailed, and occasionally graphic, and if that sort of thing either makes you squeamish or doesn't interest you, it can be skipped.**

 **I'd like to thank my illustrator, ValmureEld, for her wonderful work on this chapter in particular, which I know was challenging and out-of-the-ordinary for her.**

 **While I have made every effort to research this thoroughly and write it as accurately as possible for the setting, I have no formal medical training to this level and mistakes may (most likely, do) remain.**

* * *

A normal human would succumb to the anesthesia in under five seconds. Geralt lasts twelve. Once his eyelids are securely closed and his chest rises and falls with deep, slow breaths, Regis removes the mask and carefully intubates. He checks the placement of the tube with a stethoscope and ensures Geralt's vitals are being adequately monitored before washing his hands again for the next part of the procedure.

Even without the instruments and the wires and sensors attached to Geralt's body, Regis is still able to hear his heart, its beat uncharacteristically weak and uneven. The vampire has heard that heart before, back when the sound was rich and full, steady as a rock and untroubled by the presence of poison or parasite. Hearing it now makes him anxious. He already knows he won't be able to listen when he reaches the riskiest parts of the process, instead relying on the machines to tell him with their dispassionate, robotic beeps whether or not Geralt is alright. Listening to it directly will only provide a distraction he can't afford.

Regis scrubs down his hands thoroughly and soaks them in iodine, an alternative to the sterile gloves his claws make it impossible for him to wear. Then, he stands over the witcher's body, looking down at Geralt's face one final time before he tells himself he can no longer think of this as his friend with such high personal stakes. Geralt is a patient, and there's a job to be done.

Regis takes a deep breath, and begins.

Paying no heed to the scalpel lying redundantly on his equipment tray, the vampire instead extends a claw, just as hard and sharp for cutting through flesh, and makes a deep, straight incision down the centre of Geralt's chest. One more scar for the collection Regis thinks as he parts the skin and begins to fit in the retractors, peeling back the layers of tissue until he sees the white of Geralt's ribs.

Already in the soft space below the tip of his sternum Regis can see the bulging of the parasite snuggly encased in the chest cavity, weighing on Geralt's diaphragm and restricting the capacity of his lungs. From Regis' earlier scans, he knows the main bulk of it is housed higher up, its head situated directly below Geralt's breastbone while its tail curls upwards behind his heart then passes in front of his aorta. He's going to have to crack Geralt's sternum, and be very, very careful not to so much as scratch anything underneath.

Regis picks up the bonesaw and, with millimeter precision, begins to cut through Geralt's breastbone. When he finally splits it open and pushes in the rib spreaders, he has to take a moment to gather himself as he sees Geralt's heart emerge underneath. The organ quivers, beating over five times its normal rate as it struggles to compensate for the thick, barbed tail wrapped around it, restricting the volume of blood it can pump to Geralt's body. The protective sac encasing the heart has already been cut through by the spike in the creature's tail and partially peeled away, leaving the myocardium exposed and red. Nestled right beside the organ, cushioned against Geralt's gently inflating lungs, is the bulbous head of the larva itself.

There. That's the creature that has already caused so much suffering and endangered his friend's life.

The flood of hatred that suddenly overcomes Regis is intense and irrational. For just the briefest second, the primal, vampiric part of him feels an urge to just rip the thing from Geralt's chest and tear it to shreds, knowing its acidic blood won't harm him but feeling such a strong desire to do violence towards it.

Then, Regis gets a grip on himself. He takes a deep breath, compartmentalises his anger, and proceeds.

The parasite in question doesn't have the usual coloring of a xenomorph. Instead of the charcoal black of an adult, the maturing larva has pale, almost translucent flesh, though Regis can see the effects of Geralt's potion on it in the form of blue-black blotches beneath its skin. A misshapen lump of steel protrudes from what Regis would call its abdomen where Geralt had stabbed it earlier, and the tiny arms and proto-claws immediately adjacent seem stiff and rigid. If Regis were to inspect the ribs he's already pulled back later, he wouldn't be surprised to find scratches.

Before continuing with placing the bypass, Regis makes an effort to assess the difficulty to be encountered in removing the parasite. It is, as he'd suspected, quite rigid, and its tail rather stubborn in its refusal to detach from Geralt's heart. What he hadn't realised from the scan is that the tip of its tail does more that cut across Geralt's aorta: it's threaded through the aortic arch then presses intrusively against the sinus node, disturbing the signals that coordinate the contractions and relaxation of the cardiac muscle. No small wonder Geralt's heartbeat has become so irregular. Only his witcher's mutations leading to branching paths in the signal could have allowed his heart to maintain any kind of cohesion at all.

Regis moves on quickly, wanting to relieve some of the pressure on Geralt's heart and instead place its function in the hands of the machine. His claws - convenient in place of a scalpel - now prove one more danger he has to be exceedingly cautious of, not wanting to nick either Geralt or the larva he's trying to remove.

Regis places the cannulae for the bypass. The arterial and venous lines he places in Geralt's arm and thigh respectively, keeping them out of the way of his chest, then checks they're securely inside the blood vessels before he whirs up the pumps on the machine. The line for the cardioplegic solution to stop the heart goes directly to the aorta, and Regis threads it in below where the tail sits to avoid any occlusion. Conversely, he positions the aortic cross-clamp above it. At least that way, if there are to be any complications, Geralt won't immediately bleed out.

Now ready, Regis turns his hand to a dial on the machine and prepares to switch it on. This is the part he isn't sure he can listen to. He doesn't want to hear the moment the blood ceases to flow inside Geralt's heart and the muscle itself falls still, yet he forces himself to look. As long as he can't hear the final snap of Geralt's heart valves giving way to silence, it's easier to convince himself this is only temporary.

Regis turns the dial. The machine whirs, starts to pump blood, and the cardioplegic solution begins to flow along the tubes to Geralt's heart. When the organ gives a shudder, Regis places a careful hand over it and holds the larva steady to keep it from automatically curling any tighter. He almost wishes this weren't necessary. He can feel Geralt's heart turning cold.

As the pump circulates Geralt's blood through the oxygenator, Regis turns off the ventilator, and it's unnerving how quickly Geralt's lungs fall still. The EKG machine screeches in warning and Regis hurries to turn it off, not wanting it to reach that final bleep of finality he knows will come. It takes less than a minute for the organ to still completely, and with a glance at Geralt's face, Regis feels a chill. He looks dead. Face pale, heart still, skin cold. Only the silent readout from the blood pressure and oxygen monitors reassure Regis that he's not.

It takes another moment for the vampire to gather himself, then he sets to work. Time is ticking on, and the less of it Geralt spends on the bypass, the better.

He starts by testing the flexibility of the creature's tail, seeing how much of it he can unravel just by coaxing it, but the stiffening of its muscles looks like it can only be counteracted by force. Regis is hesitant to try. The appendage is tightly interwoven with the labyrinthine structures of veins, arteries and nerves within Geralt's chest, and despite his mutations making them more robust, none of them are invulnerable to acid. Any slight scratch or abrasion to the larva's hide could cost Geralt dearly, and Regis isn't about to take the risk.

Instead then, it look likes small, precise movements are to be the way forward. It takes several hours of careful maneuvering and inserting clamps and forceps and various tools into Geralt's chest before Regis gets so far as extracting the tail from Geralt's aorta. Its tissues are still resistant to overflexing. A few times, Regis has heard the soft scraping and scratching as if its hide had been about to split, but it hadn't bled.

While that comes as a relief, the vampire is still sharply aware of the time remaining. That's three hours. Geralt, ideally, shouldn't be on the bypass for more than six. For all the progress he's made, Regis certainly wouldn't call it halfway. He needs to work faster.

The squelch of soft tissues close tightly around his hand as Regis slides his fingers to encase the tail again, pushing it back towards Geralt's spine in search of a clearer path. Beneath the dome of the creature's head there's the swelling of bruised muscle on Geralt's diaphragm, and Regis is careful not to aggravate it as he pushes his other hand beneath the larva and reaches for the part lying furthest back towards the posterior ribs.

The lump of molten steel is still poking out from its side. That's the part Regis really doesn't want to disturb, and he does his best to rotate the creature's body away from anything that might snag it. Then, he grasps on firmly and gently tugs, seeing how far it's willing to move before encountering an obstruction. There's a little give, no more than an inch as he feels the tail beginning to shift, then a sound hits his ears that turns even the vampire's blood to ice. Something crunches. A fluid that unmistakably isn't Geralt's blood begins to seep over his skin.

Regis' reaction time is less than a millisecond. He jams his thumb into the hole that's opened up in the larva's side, squeezing tightly to form a seal that prevents anything leaking out into Geralt's chest. The acid doesn't harm him, but nonetheless he feels the bite of it as his fingers lock into place.

Regis freezes statue-still, then slowly closes his eyes. It was his claws. His own damn claws. He'd been so careful not to reopen the existing hole, he'd overlooked the danger of slicing a fresh one of his own.

He allows the dread to fill him just for a moment before opening his eyes again, fixing them on Geralt's face. His friend lies unconscious and unaware, face slack, mouth open to make room for the tube down his throat. He trusts Regis. Enough to place his life, and literally his heart, in the vampire's hands.

"It's alright," Regis says out loud to the unconscious witcher. "A slight mishap. I have it under control. You're going to be fine." That trust won't be betrayed. Regis promises himself, and Geralt, that.

With exceeding care, the vampire extracts his right hand from the tail while his left, sealing the hole, doesn't move an inch. Even for acidic blood this potent, it is still blood. Eventually, it has to clot.

The vibrant red of blood of an altogether different nature coats Regis' right hand as he reaches for the tray lying beside his rows of equipment. It was meant to house the larva after extraction, lined with sheets of acid-proof polymers, but the sheets are needed elsewhere as Regis snatches up the top two and squeezes his other hand back into the cavity beneath Geralt's heart.

Not once breaking the seal, the vampire begins to wrap the first layer of film as best he's able around the creature's trunk, tightly trapping his own thumb in the bindings. Then, he loosely positions the second layer ready to pull taut, and drags his thumb out.

As expected, his nail splits the first seal, but almost immediately it closes again as Regis presses down the second sheet of polymer. He balls a fist and tightly encases his own thumb in his fingers, not allowing any of the acid to drip while he waits to ensure the bleeding's stopped. As he'd predicted, there appears to be some clotting, the thick, greenish fluid coming out as an ooze rather than a gush. Eventually, if halts altogether, trapped between the layers of transparent polymer. They hold.

Regis lets out a breath, then at last steps away to thoroughly wash the remaining acid from his hands. Geralt can't afford a mistake like that again. That's four hours gone.

When the surgeon returns to his patient, he's triply cautious as he selects his instruments from the tray and resumes work. His claws won't be responsible for a slip-up like that again. Even if it makes maneuvering that much harder, keeping everything at a distance with forceps and tweezers carries far less risk.

Regis sets to work again. The next attempt to shift the main bulk of the larva further from Geralt's organs causes its claws to drag shallowly across his lung, but Regis will just have to accept that as superficial damage. There's no alternate way to move it. If the bindings around the larva slip, all he'll have achieved is redistributing the acid to burn through more tissues, and he isn't about to let that happen.

The six hour mark passes. Regis grows worried for what long-term consequences Geralt might suffer as a result, but he knows better than to rush. Most of the work left to be done takes place further back in Geralt's chest where blood vessels and nerves branch out to the rest of his body, and it's slow work navigating the organ lying obtrusively in front. By the time he has the larva fully extracted from the mass of nerves and blood vessels and organs filling the chest cavity, Geralt has been on the bypass for eight hours, and unconscious for nine.

At long last, it's almost over. Gently, Regis slips a hand into Geralt's chest cavity once again to push his heart out of the way as he takes hold of the tightly-curled xenomorph remains lying underneath, and lifts.

"There you are," Regis murmurs as the bulk of the larva finally comes free, and he pulls it carefully from Geralt's chest. He guides the tail out behind it before lowering Geralt's heart back into place, looking far more at home in his chest cavity without an alien body wrapped around it, then deposits the larva in the specimen tray he has to hand. If it bleeds again, the equipment is acid-proof, but the xenomorph is suddenly no longer Regis' concern. Now, all he has to do is convince himself that Geralt will be alright.

His eyes don't leave his friend's face when he goes to wash his hands again, removing all traces of the creature from his skin, then goes to stand once more at Geralt's side. A tentative hand comes to rest on the witcher's heart, still lying cold and motionless, and Regis runs a thumb over the tissue in what's almost a caress. Geralt's heart. _His very heart._ Only now, with the danger at last removed and Regis permitting himself to feel the beginnings of relief, does the magnitude of that start to sink in.

This is the organ that, in usual circumstances at least, is the core of what keeps Geralt alive: a powerhouse of vitality that pumps his blood around his body with remarkable efficiency, allowing him to achieve feats no ordinary human is capable of. It's testament to its strength that he's survived this long.

Now, that same heart is lying cold and still within his chest. Regis can't shake how wrong that feels.

Mindful of his claws, Regis slips a hand beneath Geralt's heart and gently lifts so that he can feel the underside of the muscle. There's one more task he has to perform before reviving it. Carefully, the surgeon inspects for any damage, marvelling at the complexity of the veinwork weaving through the cardiac tissues. He's seen plenty of internal organs before, even gathered a few from generous donors in jars in his lab, but none quite like this. Regis presses his thumb to the left ventricle and feels the bulge of scarring in the myocardium itself: a round puncture left behind by the tine of a pitchfork. That was supposed to have killed Geralt, yet here it is, healed, with the coronary veins and arteries having reworked themselves around the hole to strengthen the tissues and make the repaired muscle even more powerful. Remarkable. Faced with the evidence of Geralt's resilience, Regis feels far more confidence for his friend's recovery.

He examines the rest of Geralt's heart and major blood vessels closely, finding some degree of bruising to the right atrium, though the aortic trunk is intact and shows no sign of lasting damage from the creature's tail. The outer membrane of the protective sac around the heart has ruptured, but it should be easy enough to repair. There's nothing to suggest Geralt's heart will be unable to beat on its own.

It's been still too long. Time to awaken it.

Regis reaches for the dial on the bypass machine and turns it off, halting the circulation of cardioplegic solution to Geralt's heart, then removes the aortic cross-clamp. He keeps one hand wrapped protectively around the organ while he injects the solution to revive it with a fine needle, then he waits.

Several seconds pass before anything happens. Slowly but surely, Regis feels the warmth returning, and then Geralt's heart quivers. It twitches, shudders, then reaches for a fully-fledged beat. Cradled within Regis' palm, Geralt's heart gives a powerful thump. Then another. Within a few seconds, its rhythm has returned, pumping away with strength and vitality within Geralt's chest. Faster than usual for a witcher, maybe, as if trying to catch up with all the beats it had missed, but it feels warm. Alive.

For several of Geralt's heartbeats, Regis doesn't move, holding a breath he doesn't even need as he feels the organ pump away in his hand. There's something poetic about it, a witcher's living heart willingly resting in a vampire's claws. Regis will make sure that trust isn't displaced. Geralt will wake up, no matter the cost.

Carefully, as if handling something sacred, Regis gently removes his hand to allow Geralt's heart to once again lie freely in the space between his lungs. Now that he dares listen again, and isn't plagued by the fear that Geralt's heart has beat its last, the next steps become much easier. Regis removes the tubes for the bypass, repairs the hole in Geralt's pericardium, then closes up his ribcage and staples his sternum back together. The vampire makes quick yet precise work of suturing the various layers of tissue above it, finishing with an almost invisible line of stitches in the outer layer of skin.

Then, at long last, he takes Geralt off the ventilator. The anaesthetic chemicals flowing to the vein in his arm are replaced by sedatives and a healthy dose of painkillers, and Regis can't help the smile that crosses his face as he sees Geralt begin to breathe on his own. "There. I'm sure that's much easier without all that dead weight in your chest," he remarks, placing the parasite's corpse in a sealed container to be studied later.

The vampire moves Geralt's still-unconscious body to a bed without difficulty, and props him up against him while he dresses the incision site and wraps bandages firmly around his ribs. As he wipes away the traces of blood and iodine still clinging to Geralt's skin, the vampire is struck with a sudden realisation. Geralt's blood hadn't tempted him during the surgery. Not once.

"You're alright," Regis murmurs once he's done, cradling Geralt's head to lie him down again. "You're alright, my friend." He very much wants to believe it.

Regis checks the monitors and listens to Geralt's heart and lungs with a stethoscope once more before finally leaving him to sleep. He's sure that when Geralt wakes he'll insist on taking an oral dose of Swallow or another of his witcher's elixirs, though Regis isn't about to permit him to fill his body with toxic substances again quite so soon. The cocktail of painkillers and medicines in his IV, some of which had been made with chemical and herbal extracts derived in Regis' own lab, should be more than adequate to assist the healing process.

It's hard for the vampire to walk away to return to cleaning up the theatre. As much as Geralt appears to be doing well, until the witcher opens his eyes, Regis can't alleviate the worry that he'll start to suffer side effects from his prolonged time on the bypass or that more complications may arise.

Worry on its own never did anyone any good. Regis has to put it to good use.

Keeping his ear trained on the sound of Geralt's heart, reassuringly strong, Regis returns to cleaning and tidying the clinic ready for business as usual again tomorrow. Silently, he promises that there'll be a friendly face there waiting for Geralt when he wakes up.


	6. Recuperation

The first thing Geralt becomes aware of it a steady, rhythmic beeping somewhere in the distance. The second is the warmth of a small hand and delicate fingers tightly grasping his own.

He sighs, tries to inhale deeply only to be rewarded with a sudden pang in his chest, and then cracks open his eyes. As he adjusts his pupils, an anxious pair of familiar green eyes come into focus, making his heart give two quickened thumps echoed in the beeping of the monitor. "Ciri?" His voice sounds hoarse, as if he's had something shoved down his throat. For the second time in 24 hours, he recalls that he has.

"Geralt?" Those bright green eyes shine with tears and she squeezes his hand tighter. "I was worried. Thought by the time I got here it might be too late."

He blinks, confused, and considers trying to sit up. The sudden pain in his sternum makes him think better of it. "How did you know where I was?"

"I dreamt about you. Some creature had…" She trails off and swallows, not wanting to dwell on the thought, and Geralt knows what image is in her head. He's seen it too. "Anyway, when I woke up I got a call from Regis. Told me you were in trouble, and I should come."

"He called you?"

"I did," another voice cuts in, and Geralt blinks and looks up to see Regis crossing the room from just a few feet away. "The surgery proved more complicated than I anticipated. You were on bypass for considerably longer than the maximum recommended time, even for a witcher." He crosses to the monitors to check Geralt's vitals, then dons his stethoscope to listen to Geralt's chest more closely over the bandages encircling it. It's impossible for the witcher to discern anything from his calm, neutral expression. "I had thought your family ought to be here in case your condition deteriorated further," Regis says, and only then does Geralt hear the well-concealed but still unmistakeable worry in his voice.

Part of him wants to ask if his condition did deteriorate further and if anything else went badly wrong, but there's another thought that has jumped quickly to the front of his mind. "Yen?"

"Yennefer exhausted herself considerably creating an interplanetary portal to get here," Regis answers, "But she succeeded. She's resting, currently, but I shall inform her you've woken. The surgery was somewhat touch-and-go for a while, Geralt. I won't pretend there were no complications, but in the end the larva was successfully extracted with minimal damage to your heart or any other organs. Currently, I have the specimen housed in a jar in my laboratory. I had rather wondered if you would like to keep it as a trophy?"

Geralt considers for a minute, then pulls a face. "No thanks. I think I'm good."

Regis chuckles softly. "As you wish. Quite understandable after the ordeal it's put you through, though I'm sure there are many valuable insights to be gained from my studying it further. I'm quite astounded by your body's resilience. Your vital signs are strong, Geralt, and your heart appears to have recovered remarkably well. I daresay you'll feel back to your old self within a couple of days, though even with your witcher's healing abilities, your sternum will require a few weeks to fully repair itself."

Geralt grunts and gives a small nod of acknowledgement. "Regis," he says tiredly. "I owe you my life for this. Thank you."

"You owe me nothing, my friend." Regis' mouth pulls into a warm, close-lipped smile. "I shall go fetch your sorceress and tell her there is no more need to worry. In the meantime, you should rest."

He rises and slings the stethoscope back around his neck, patting Ciri reassuringly on his shoulder on the way out. She still hasn't let go of his hand.

"What happened, Geralt?" she asks quietly. "Lambert called not long after Regis did, asking about you. He'd tried to make contact with you, but couldn't. Wanted to know what contract you'd currently taken. He seemed concerned."

Geralt frowns, puzzled as to why that would be, but he's too exhausted to get his brain to work through the details of everything right now. "Xenomorph contract," he tells her instead. "Weyland-Yutani. Told me they needed a small nest clearing for terraforming. Sent some surveys of the planet's surface through so I could prep for it, but when I got there...well, it was a lot bigger than they'd said."

"Were they at least offering a fair sum?"

"Hardly. Doubt I'll see a credit of it, anyway. Had to nuke the place to make it out of there, and their scanners will have picked it up by now. You know corporate lawyers. They'll claim it voids the contract."

Ciri purses her lips, and he can practically see the cogs whirring in her brain. "Bastards," she murmurs quietly.

"Hey." Geralt gives a gentle squeeze of her hand, the gesture made slightly awkward by the clunky pulse monitor clipped to his finger. "Fuck them. I survived. That's what's important."

Ciri meets his gaze, feels the warmth of his hand around hers, listens to the slow, regular beeping of the heart monitor, and smiles.

For several of Geralt's heartbeats, they sit that way in silence, drawing comfort from each other's presence. Then, another figure appears in the doorway, and Geralt's heart monitor betrays a flutter in his pulse.

"Geralt?"

He looks up to see Yennefer, her violet eyes glistening, staring as if she can't quite believe he's safe and alive and right there in front of her. Then, she suddenly strides over to him and cups his face with her hands.

"Yen…"

He's interrupted by the press of her lips against his, a prolonged, tender kiss as she drinks in the feel of him alive and breathing beneath her touch. "Don't ever do that to me again," she mutters when she finally pulls back, her voice at once both hard and fragile.

Beside him, Ciri stands and gently disentangles their fingers, through not before giving his one final reassuring squeeze. "I'll leave the pair of you to it," she says. "I need to go for a while. Things to do, but I promise I won't be long."

"What things?" Geralt asks, suddenly puzzled, and thinks he's surely missing something as Yen and Ciri exchange a look.

"You know. Monsters to kill," Ciri says, and then she leans in to press a gentle goodbye kiss to his forehead. "I'll see you later."

He watches her go, brow creasing in confusion, then it's soothed by Yen's gentle touch stroking his hair. "Don't worry about her, she'll be fine."

"What was that about?"

"Never you mind. She can tell you when she gets back. For now, you need to focus on recovery."

"Yen—"

"Shh." She silences him with a finger pressed to his lips. "Not another word, Geralt." The sorceress clambers up onto the bed to lie beside him, curling her body against his, then with a wave of her hand, silences the heart monitor.

"Don't you think Regis needs that?" Geralt remarks as Yen begins to settle her head down against his shoulder, carefully avoiding his chest.

"He's a vampire. He'll manage without, as will I," she says, her breath tickling his neck. "I thought I told you not to speak?"

"Hmm." He hums softly, saying nothing more as her hand snakes over his waist to find his. She tugs it towards her, tangling their fingers together as a warmth begins to seep from her touch. He recognises the tingle of magic spreading through his body, and it soothes the pain in his chest and makes his breath come easier as he begins to feel peaceful and mildly euphoric. It's a thousand time better than the painkillers Regis has pumping into him through the IV.

Yennefer listens to his heartbeat. It seems louder to her now, without the whine of the monitors to overpower it, and she takes comfort in the steady rhythm as slow and as regular as the first time she'd heard it. Somewhere inside her, something still churns uncomfortably away with a kind of anguish she can't let go: a painful cocktail of frustration and anger and fear at their situation that she has yet to work through. It can wait until Geralt feels better. She won't raise it with him until she's heard enough of those steady heartbeats to know he can face it.

Geralt inclines his head towards her and breathes in her scent. Lilac and gooseberries. All is as it should be. He closes his eyes.

* * *

"Mr. Weyland."

Several pairs of eyes turn in surprise to face the boardroom door as it swings open and a woman strides in. Immediately, it's obvious she doesn't belong to the corporate world of the company, clad in the leather and kevlar armour of a witcher with a sword strapped to her back. At her hip is a silver pistol, the runes engraved on the slide faintly glowing green with recent use.

The board members exchange confused, anxious glances, then the CEO reaches for the intercom on the table in front of him and buzzes through. "Security, we have an intruder in the boardroom. Can we get someone to remove her, please?"

"Don't bother. I've already dealt with them," the woman says dismissively, and even without confirmation of his identity, her green eyes hone in on Weyland like missiles. "My name is Cirilla. I'm here about a witcher contract."

There's a pause while he still seems to be waiting for a reply, then his eyes dart nervously about him when he's only met with silence. "Don't have any available contracts right now," Weyland says instead. "And we don't pay retainers. If you want to leave your contact details…"

"Not for me," she interrupts him. "You recently employed a witcher named Geralt to take out a xenomorph nest on RX-422. Almost got him killed, and you didn't even pay."

There's a definite air of unease in the room as all six board members seem unsure what to make of the situation. Weyland looks at Ciri, eyeing up her weapons, then puffs himself up. "We regret what happened to the witcher, but due to his own actions, he isn't covered under company policy. Clear failure to fulfill the terms of the contract. We told him no nuking; radioactive wasteland can't be terraformed. He did it anyway."

Her eyes narrow. "Thing is, the only way to deal with a nest of that size is radioactive bombs. And Geralt would have known that from the start had you been honest with him about the situation." She glares at each of them in turn, and they shiftily avoid her gaze.

"We gave the witcher all the information we had available. If it was faulty, we can't be held responsible."

"Checked your records when I came in," Ciri says icily. "No faults. You just lied."

Weyland splutters. He looks indignant, but she knows she's got him. "This is ridiculous! We wanted that contract to succeed. Why would we set the witcher up to fail when it only harms company interests?"

"Because you knew it was a job for more than one witcher," Ciri answers. "But if you send them in one at a time so that the first dies starting the job, then you hire another to finish it, you only have to pay one fee. Unfortunately for you, the witcher you were trying to negotiate with to pick up the pieces, Lambert, is a friend of mine. And of Geralt's."

For a moment, there's stunned silence from everyone around the table. Then Weyland's lips curl. "Enough of this," he snarls. "Security!" His shouting is pointless, but she can see his hand twitching frantically under the table, no doubt mashing what she knows to be a panic button. It will do him no good.

"Here's what's going to happen," Ciri continues, ignoring it. "First, you're going to transfer Geralt his pay. Double the agreed upon fee, to make it fair. Then, you're going to take your terraforming company and fuck off out of the system. Any projects you've already started, you can abandon them. If the way you operate it to sacrifice human lives for the sake of a few thousand credits, then I'm not about to let you keep doing business here."

Faintly, she hears something click under the table, and doesn't miss the look Weyland exchanges with the man to his right. "And who do you think you are telling us what to do, little girl?" he spits.

"You see this sword on my back, Mr Weyland?" Ciri says, unperturbed. "It's for killing monsters."

The next part happens in an instant. The man sat to Weyland's right rises, hands emerging from under the table to reveal the pistol clutched in his grip. At the exact same moment, the blade in question is suddenly in Ciri's hands, arcing down as he aims the gun towards her. Before his fingers even have chance to squeeze the trigger, they're severed below the knuckle as the edge of the sword finds its target.

The man screams, gun clattering to the floor as he clutches his gushing stumps to his chest, then from the other side of the table another of the board members produces a firearm. He points it desperately, panicked eyes betraying inexperience as he lets off a burst of fire in Ciri's direction, but in the blink of an eye, she's no longer there. She appears behind him in a flash of green and puts the blade through his neck.

Not all of them are armed. Of the remaining board members, two have bolted for the door, realising their security team isn't coming. The woman on Weyland's left stands, the company sorceress beginning to conjure energy in her palms, but thinks better of it when in another blink, Ciri's sword is at her throat. "Don't," the witcher warns. "Just get out."

For a moment, the sorceress seems to consider, then gulps and hurriedly backs away towards the door. The man with the bleeding hand stumbles after her, whimpering.

Weyland glances at the exit and decides to try and make a break for it, but is quickly stopped as Ciri draws her pistol and points it at him, both her weapons now levelled in his direction. "Not you."

He turns to face her and swallows nervously. "Alright, I'll transfer the credits. Triple the fee, even. But please, this is the most lucrative star system for terraforming in the known galaxy. I can't just abandon it…"

She takes a step towards him. "There's something you should know about me, Mr. Weyland," Ciri says, advancing until she has him backed up against the wall. "Anywhere in the universe, I can be there with just a thought. So, if I ever find out you've come back here and started up operations again, I will find you. Then, just so you know exactly what it is you did to Geralt, I'll find a xenomorph nest of my own to throw you into." Her sword touches his throat, eyes blazing. "Understand?"

A soft whimper sounds in Weyland's throat. He squirms, trying to wriggle away from the blade, and realises there's nowhere to go. "Yes," he agrees, voice high-pitched and strained. "Alright, we'll start relocation proceedings right away."

"Good," Ciri says, satisfied. The flat of the blade taps lightly under his chin before she pulls it back. "Best start packing your bags, then."

Then in a flash of green, she's gone.

* * *

"Taking on an entire nest of xenomorphs on your own. What were you thinking?" Yen chastises Geralt later when she's removing the bandages Regis put on. They need changing, but more than that, she wants to inspect the damage and see how bad it is for herself.

"Didn't realise how big it was. They said it was a small nest," Geralt protests, and is met with a look of disgust.

"Then you should have checked. Planned this out properly instead of rushing in and nearly getting yourself killed."

"I didn't though, did I? Get killed. I'm still here." It's the wrong thing to say, and he knows it the instant the words leave his mouth.

"Thanks only to Regis and no small amount of blind luck," Yen snaps, and he thinks he's only spared more of her wrath as the bandage falls away and her eyes widen at the sight of the raw incision in his chest. "If the parasite didn't kill you, the potion you used to treat it had almost as good of a chance."

He wants to blame it on the contractors who had sent him there, but he knows she has a point. He'd been reckless. Not careful enough. "I know," Geralt admits, regretting how things played out. "But lesson learned. For next time."

Her nostrils flare. "What do you mean ' _next time'_?"

"Next time they offer me a contract like that, I won't take it."

Yennefer fixes him with a silent stare. Apparently, it's not the answer she'd expected to get, but she seems relieved to hear it. For just a moment longer, the anger continues to blaze in her eyes, then she heaves a sigh and reaches out a hand to rest gently on his chest.

"Why didn't you come to me, Geralt?" Her voice is soft as her fingers delicately trace the red line of the incision, both anxious and careful as she pauses between changing the bandages. It's a professional job, perfectly straight and neatly sutured, yet all the same, she seems upset.

"Didn't want to worry you," Geralt answers, and even with the wound still tender he subconsciously leans into her touch. "Regis is an experienced surgeon. Seemed like the best option."

"A microportal could have removed the parasite from your chest without the need for invasive surgery," Yen insists, and there's the hint of a pout on her lips.

"I'd rather keep portals—micro or otherwise—away from my internal organs. Its tail was wrapped around my heart, Yen. If anything had gone wrong…" He trails off, unable to say it out loud. Even a slightly misaligned portal would have taken a chunk of his vital organs with it, or left behind part of the larva to bleed out acid into chest. Neither is an image he wants to put in her mind.

Yen sighs and leans forward, tilting her head until her brow is pressed against his. She wants to tell him it would have been okay, promise that he'd have been safe in her hands, but as her fingers come to rest on the scars of the time she'd failed to save him once before, she knows that she can't. His heart taps its rhythm against her palm, beating strong and steady and safe, and she feels a sudden rush of gratitude towards Regis for doing what she couldn't. If a portal had placed that heart in danger, she doesn't think she could take the risk. "You're right," Yen murmurs, and can't quite keep the pain of that confession out of her voice.

Geralt's lips twitch. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"You heard me." Her voice hardens, annoyed that he'd choose now to tease her, but it lasts barely an instant. She isn't reading his mind. Not properly, but his thoughts are loud enough that she knows what it is he can't bring himself to say. _If something had gone wrong, I didn't want you to have to face that again. I couldn't do it to you, Yen._

Something wrenches inside her chest, and all her indignation gives way only to relief. She knows she couldn't have survived it, either. "I'm glad you're alright, Geralt," she breathes, voice barely even a whisper.

Strong arms wrap around her, and she feels his warmth envelop her as he holds her carefully to his chest and buries his face in her hair, breathing her in. "Me too, Yen."


End file.
